1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to food products. More particularly, the present invention relates to dry culinary mixes for the provision of layer cakes, to finished cakes prepared from such mixes and to methods of preparing such finished cakes.
2. The Prior Art
The use of prepared mixes has received wide usage, particularly in home baking. These dry mixes provide convenience by eliminating the steps of ingredient selection, measurement and blending. To prepare cake batters from these dry mixes for baking, liquid materials such as water or milk, liquid shortening, eggs, etc. are added and the combination is then mixed to form a homogeneous mixture or batter and beaten to incorporate air. The resulting aerated batter is then typically transferred to a greased pan or tray and then baked to obtain finished cakes.
While these dry culinary mixes are convenient, it is apparent from the above description that the typical cake preparation procedure still contains several steps. It would be desirable then to eliminate one or more of these steps to provide products of even greater convenience. To this end, certain products have been marketed from time to time which attempt to provide greater convenience to the user. For example, one such product comprises previously hydrated batter. While somewhat more convenient, such products suffer from several disadvantages by virtue of the presence of water, e.g., limited shelf life, special storage requirements, such as refrigeration, etc. These disadvantages have prevented these products from obtaining widespread acceptance. Accordingly, most art efforts then have been directed toward providing dry mixes for cakes and to improving both the use or characteristics of the dry mix or of the finished cake prepared therefrom. Dry mixes for cakes may be divided into two groups, namely shortening-type mixes, e.g., layer cakes and non-shortening type mixes, e.g., angel food cakes. The present invention relates to both types, generally, and in particular to shortening-type cake mixes. Shortening-type cake mixes contain, as major ingredients, flour, sugar, and shortening. To these major constituents other ingredients such as emulsifier, (generally incorporated into the shortening) starches, flavors, leavening, egg solids, non-fat milk solids may be added.
Greater convenience in using dry mixes can be provided by "full formulation" cake mixes. Full formulation mixes are distinguished from partial formulation mixes in that only water need be added for mixing and beating to form an aerated batter. Such full formulation mixes are commercially available and enjoy widespread acceptance particularly in the food service or commercial food industry.
Full formulation cake mixes, while convenient as regards time of mixing, nevertheless require the addition of prescribed quantities of water, blending at low speed to form a batter and subsequent aeration and transference to a greased baking container. Even greater convenience for the at-home preparation of layer cakes are provided by the "stir-in-the-pan" layer cake dry mixes. Typically, these are full formulation cake mixes which are specially formulated to be rapidly rehydratable and to be hand mixable. (See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,694,229, issued Sept. 26, 1972 to N. Norbsy et al.) Certain cake mixes of this type contain agglomerated all-purpose wheat flour as a component to aid in the rapid hydration of the cake mix. (See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,708,309, issued Jan. 2, 1973 to G. E. Johnson et al.) each of which are incorporated herein by reference. However, even these mixes must still be hand stirred to form a batter. Moreover, these cake mixes are typically marketed in combination with specially coated containers so that batters can be prepared in the baking pan and thereafter baked without the cake sticking to the pan.
Co-pending application (Ser. No. 409,204, filed Aug. 18, 1982 by J. R. Blake, R. K. Knutson and G. J. VanHulle) entitled "No-Stir Dry Mixes for Layer Cakes," and which is incorporated herein by reference, provides an improvement in full formulation culinary mixes. The improvement resides in providing full formulation cake mixes in a particular physical form, i.e., granules, which allow for the preparation of finished baked cakes without requiring the conventional steps of mixing to form a batter, aerating the batter, greasing or coating the baking container or transferring the aerated batter to the coated baking container.
The present invention provides a further improvement to the novel layer cake granules of this co-pending application. The present invention provides dry mixes for layer cakes in the form of granules additionally comprising a pudding component. It has been surprisingly discovered that dry pudding compositions can also be prepared in the novel particular physical form of granules and that such granules can be combined with granulated layer cakes to be used for the preparation of a novel form of a finished cake. The present dry mixes allow for a new form of finished cakes having a discontinuous and distinct phase of pudding. Such dry mixes of the present invention additionally provide the convenience advantages of no mixing, aeration, etc.
Dry mixes for layer cakes are known which are characterized as containing pudding. Generally these mixes contain conventional layer cake formulations in terms of ingredients and their concentrations. These mixes additionally contain those ingredients which typically comprise either conventional or instant pudding dry mixes, namely, sugar(s), flavorings and ungelatinized starch or pregelatinized starch. As a rule, these extra ingredients, or extra levels of ingredients (e.g., sugar) are, however, typically uniformly blended with the other layer cake ingredients. Together, the mix ingredients are formed into a homogeneous batter with added liquids in conventional manner, aerated, baked, etc. to form finished layer cakes. These cakes are characterized, thus by having a homogeneous structure. The extra pudding ingredients modify the finished cake to provide enhanced moistness and possibly a heavier texture rather than the lighter, drier, more crumbly texture of traditional layer cakes. In contrast, the present finished cakes contain discrete, distinct, or discontinuous regions of pudding more analogous to cream-filled cake desserts.
Of course, agglomeration is an old technique in the food art and a variety of food products are available in agglomerated form. Additionally, the food art is replete with agglomeration techniques. (See, for example, "Agglomeration Processes in Food Manufacture," by Nicholas Pintauro Noyes Data Corporation, 1972.) Generally, food products are agglomerated to improve one or more of several product attributes. First, food products have been agglomerated to improve aesthetics. For example, soluble coffee powders have been agglomerated primarily for product aesthetics. (See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,135,612 issued June 2, 1964 to E. R. Hair). Second, agglomeration has been more commonly used to provide products of improved material handling, e.g., pourability. Exemplary agglomerated products and methods include those described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,073,951, issued Feb. 14, 1978 to R. G. Sargeant. Most commonly, very large numbers of food products have been agglomerated in the past to enhance their solubility or dispersion characteristics in liquids. These products include flour, non-fat dry milk solids, cocoa, sugars, eggs, etc.
Exemplary products and methods of preparation are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,156,020, issued May 5, 1979 to Bohrmann et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,021,582, issued May 3, 1977 to Bohrmann et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,016,337 issued April 5, 1977 to J. Y. Hsu.
While these agglomerated products and methods have been used in the past for the provides of products exhibiting improved aesthetics, material handling and dispersability in liquids, it has been surprisingly discovered that agglomeration can be employed to provide pudding materials useful as ingredients in no-stir layer cake mixes and to novel forms of finished cakes prepared therefrom. Additionally, the present granules for both layer cake and pudding components are much larger in size than those of other typically agglomerated food products. Moreover, while general agglomeration techniques have been used to realize the present granules, the granules are importantly characterized by specific physical properties not previously recognized as important to cake mix formulation.